Paradox Schmaradox
by CJ Burns
Summary: After saving the younger version of herself, Amy is dying on Apalapucia. The last person she expects back is the Doctor.
1. Chapter 1

She hadn't thought it would end like this.

Amy looked up at the handbots, her vision starting to blur. The familiar, wheezing noise of the TARDIS was fading in the background, whisking Rory and her younger self away to safety. She saw the glint of the points of the syringes aimed at her and laughed, an angry noise that ended in a choked sob. There was a hiss and a sharp pain as the needle penetrated her skin. A scream escaped her lips as the medication flowed through her veins.

She hadn't thought it would be like this. She'd thought that when the TARDIS left she would simply vanish from the timestream, as though she had never existed.

She hadn't anticipated the pain.

Her blood was pumping hard, trying to cope with a dose intended for a dual-hearted system. She knew she was dying and once again a small laugh escaped her. The handbots were moving away from her now that their mission was accomplished, their feet clanking on the floor as they walked. Beyond that, she could hear something – something she had never expected to hear again.

"Amelia Pond."

Amy heard the undercurrent of affection in his voice and fought back a wave of anger. Fighting back the nausea, she pushed against the floor and sat up. He was there, leaning against his blue box and looking at her, his face serious.

"Came back to watch me die?" Her voice was weak. "Should have known you wouldn't want to miss the end of the story."

He looked away, a deprecating smile at the edge of his lips.

"And what about the Chen7?" Amy asked.

"It has a lifespan. I shouldn't be in any danger."

"Why take the risk? Shouldn't you be off swanning around the universe with Amy and her Rory?" She couldn't conceal the bitterness in her voice.

"Tried that for a bit. Wasn't all it was cracked up to be. And besides.." his smile was twisted, "I didn't want you to die alone. No-one should have to die alone."

Amy looked at him, suddenly seeing him as if for the first time. It was always his smile she had been attracted to, the boyish grin that made him seem young, human. But now she looked at his eyes. They were dark, distant – the eyes of an alien being. She took a deep breath.

"You know, I've never really been good at anything? Well, unless you count being a kiss-a-gram. Or keeping your bony butt in line. But at school I wasn't really – great at anything." She coughed, the pain doubling her over. "But over the last 36 years I learned something I'm good at." Reaching into her pocket, Amy pulled out the sonic screwdriver she had built. "I'm good with technology. I studied the handbots, I talked to the Interface. And I came up with a Plan B."

Turning the screwdriver over in her hand, Amy pressed a red button on the handle. It started to flash, it's signal bouncing out through the facility.

"I was never going to die alone."

The Doctor's eyes widened, a grin breaking out across his face. He pushed away from the wall, energy pulsing through his movements.

"Of course! Oh Amy, you beautiful, wonderful genius! Of course, the handbots don't get provided with the medications, they mix their own, don't they?"

Amy pushed herself back against the wall, the ghost of a smile on her lips as the silhouette of the Rorybot appeared in the doorway.

"Rorybot!" said the Doctor, throwing his arms wide as though greeting a long, lost friend. "Here to save our Amy! You came up with the antidote, didn't you?"

The Rorybot, his disturbing, handless arms in front of him, awkwardly waddled over to where Amy sat. His chest cavity swung open and Amy reached inside, pulling one of the ominous-looking syringes. Her breath caught as she inserted it into her arm, depressing the plunger and watching the greenish-grey liquid disappear. The Doctor knelt down in front of her, taking her face in both hands and kissing her squarely on the forehead and then jumped up again.

"You're amazing, Amelia Pond."

The colour was starting to come back into her cheeks now. She stretched her arm out and ran her hand down Rorybot's vaguely concerned face.

"Doctor..." She looked around, and felt the familiar sense of betrayal she had fought against for 36 years. He was gone again. From inside the police box there was the sound of wires sparking off each other and the Doctor's distant voice.

"Paradox? Bah! Humbug! Since when has the Universe told me what to do?"

Suddenly, his head popped out of the TARDIS door. He looked down at her and smiled. Amy couldn't help herself, she smiled back and pushed herself to her feet.

"Come along, Pond!"


	2. Chapter 2  Landing

"It's not going to work."

The Doctor, in the middle of pulling a lever that looked suspiciously like the end of a pool cue, shook his free hand dismissively. "Of course it is!" he yelled over the screeching whine of the engines, "Come on, old girl, you can do it!"

He felt the TARDIS shake ominously beneath his feet. Over the other side of the room, his new-old Amy grabbed the handrail, her knuckles white, her jaw tense.

"Almost there," he said cheerily, dashing around to the other side of the console and pressing a giant red button.

The Doctor felt a sudden moment of near-panic as a flash of bright-white light enveloped them both. Perhaps this time he had finally done it - perhaps this time the universe, with it's stodgy old laws, had finally gotten tired to bending to suit his whims. Perhaps...

The light disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. The Doctor looked around carefully and took a deep breath. Everything seemed as it should. The relative causality spectrograph was blinking green-green-green-red, which he assumed was good seeing as that was what it normally did.

Except something was not right. It took him a moment to work out what the problem was. The room was absolutely silent. The normal thrum of the engines that provided a constant background noise was uncannily absent.

"You've blown the inhibitor circuit."

Amy was already down below the floating floor, kneeling beside a mess of wires. He whistled under his breath. She'd moved so quickly, so quietly, he hadn't realised she'd moved at all. His Amy, the Amy he had left safe in London, couldn't have done that. Stupidly, he felt a moment of unease. The same feeling you get when you look at someone you have known for years and suddenly see them as a stranger would.

The scent of melted plastic brought him back to the problem at hand.

"Can't have," he said, taking the stairs down two at a time, "the inhibitor circuit isn't even attached. I just keep it there because generally a TARDIS should have one. People like to see one around, you know. Makes them feel like this is a proper, professional operation."

"Well, the energy supply it wasn't hooked up to has completely fried it," she responded dryly.

He stood still for a moment, looking deep in thought. That usually worked, but Amy was looking up at him with a distinctly unimpressed expression on her face.

"In that case, let's go find a new one."

Amy jumped to her feet and followed him to the door.

"Hang on a second, you don't even know we are somewhere we can..."

"Of course we're somewhere. Everywhere is somewhere. We aren't floating, I'd be able to feel it. Therefore we have landed, therefore we are," he threw the doors open triumphantly, "...somewhere."

Amy bit down her howl of frustration as they looked out at the tangled mass of vines and trees that lay outside the TARDIS doors. She had spent so long sneaking through the corridors of the kindness centre that keeping her emotions in check had become second nature. The knowledge dawned on her anew that she no longer had to be on constant watch, no longer had to be fearful of any unintended noise that may draw the attention of the handbots.

But that didn't make it any less annoying that they were stuck in the middle of nowhere with a machine that could go anywhere in time and space, if only it wasn't broken.

She quickly made an inventory of the supplies she knew they had aboard the ship. The materials for the circuit were specialised. Of course he wouldn't carry a spare - that wasn't how the Doctor did things. And there was absolutely no way of repairing it.

"So, oh wise one, what are we going to do now?"

He was standing there gaping at the jungle in front of him. As soon as she spoke, he shut his mouth and grinned at her.

"Now we get to have an adventure."


End file.
